We’ve all done it…

Well, I know I have, anyway.

So, just what is “it”?
Well, “it” is climbing the Eiffel Tower. Without ropes.

Of course, I happened to take the stairs – it seemed the sensible option, if I’m honest. James Kingston? No, he took the girders to get up there.
Less sensible, more viral video-friendly.

How are those palms doing, hey? Mildly moist? Don’t lose your grip, now.

Says James (in the video description here):

After a few more hours playing around on the tower workers & tourists started coming up in the lifts. We were spotted again around 9AM so we climbed down & met with security. We were handcuffed & taken to the local police station where we were held & questioned for around 6 hours before being released without charges (I also had to promise them I wouldn’t climb it again for 3 years).

The rest of his Youtube account is equally nuts.

I’ve still yet to understand why people do stuff like this. I get the argument for the immediate adrenaline rush of a skydive or a bungee jump, but where’s the appeal in several hours trespassing in the dark, with the threat of arrest or (near) immediate death should something go awry?

I don’t need that sort of stress in my life, and thus I shall continue to live vicariously through people like James Kingston.

Error

This guy just got himself a beagle puppy:

image

Rookie error. If only he had asked me for advice first.
I can see that I’m going to have to set up some sort of pre-emptive advisory service for foolish individuals such as this.

That is, if I have time between repairing the garden and saving geckos from the jaws of our own huge mistake.

Charming Charlie

An oldie, but a goodie. And with the Peanut movie coming out real soon now, almost re-topical.
Zeitgeist-tastic.

So, what do you get when you combine the drawings and characters of Charles M. Schulz with the musical meanderings of Morrissey’s mind? You get This Charming Charlie – the tumblr that… well… combines those two things above.

o-PEANUTS-570 o-LAUREN-LOPRETE-570

Plenty more where that came from. What a genius idea.
Next week: Roadrunner does Skrillex: “Meep Meep Wob-wob-wob-wob-wob”.

Man On The Moon

SUSPEND YOUR SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE, for the 2015 John Lewis Christmas ad is here and while being a whole lot less full of penguins than last year, there are a few awkward stretches of reality that you’re going to have ignore if you’re going to fully enjoy this year’s effort.

Music is Oasis’ Half The World Away, covered by Norwegian artist Aurora (Aksenes), who will be singing at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert next month, along with some other Norwegian band.

And the advert is lovely and inclusive, sending out the right messages for the holiday period. Because, it’s always nice for a strange, lonely, probably harmless, but nevertheless ever-so-slightly creepy, old man to be able to stare directly into a young girl’s home, isn’t it? Especially at Christmas.
I wonder if her parents know about this?

She is, however, clearly a scientific genius. NASA need to sign her up right now.
Rigging up a telescope that size to be able to achieve that sort of resolution is something no optical physicist in history has yet managed. And yet she’s… what? 10 years old?, and is working out of the living room of a house in suburbia while being distracted by her brother’s XBox antics. Incredible. In. Credible. No, I mean literally, not credible.
And her package delivery system of twelve apparently ordinary helium balloons to get that telescope in a shoebox to him? That’s akin to the Rosetta Comet team landing on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. If this analogy is to be continued, she will come down to breakfast on Boxing Day wearing a dodgy shirt, and everyone will hate her and forget her altruism and seemingly impossible lunar transport system of the previous evening, and how she made an old man who can apparently survive without oxygen, very happy.

How did he get up there, anyway? What’s he been eating? Where did the wood come from to build his house and that bench? Why hasn’t an earth based astronomer noted his presence? Why does he look vaguely like a cross between a Galapagos tortoise and Doc Brown out of Back To The Future? So many questions…

And then, if we’re going to be properly pedantic (and hey, who’s going to stop us?), then “Half The World Away” would amount to a distance of 3,185.5km. That’s not even 1% of the distance to the Moon. Each party involved is going to be sadly disappointed by that sort of meagre effort, although I suppose Mr Green Cheese wouldn’t even know about it.

Look, it’s nice, it’s touching, but it’s wholly scientifically invalid and completely implausible. What are our kids going to learn from this?

I, for one, will not be shopping at John Lewis this Xmas.

UPDATE: The Guardian: Who is Moon Hitler?
The Independent (spoiler: it’s not): The John Lewis Christmas advert and the Commodification of Loneliness.

#HelloJetman

This is stunning.

Long-term readers of this blog will know my fondness for A380s (see my Lufthansa album and my BA post). They’re just so cuddlable and aeronautically impressive.
Other, more recent readers will have noted that I have done a lot of travelling to and from the UK over the last 12 months. All of those trips have been on Emirates, and they have not put a single foot wrong on any of the 28-odd flights I’ve done with them. I even enjoyed a spell in the A380 Business Class lounge on my last flight. Olives, bar snacks and Bloody Marys – a posh pub at 35,000 ft. A bizarre experience.
And then they released that Jennifer Aniston advert, but I still liked them.

But how amazing is this?

Here are a few numbers:

Cruising at just 4,000 feet (“just” for the plane, that’s pretty high for flying people) the trio flew in two holding patterns while a fourth object in the sky (the film crew in a helicopter) kept distance 1,000 feet above. The A380 couldn’t be more different from the jet wings worn by the pilots though. The Emirates craft pumps out 70,000 pounds of thrust per engine with a max speed of 490 knots, making the wearable-wing’s 88 pounds and 170 knots seem like a mild breeze in comparison.

It’s not an advert for Emirates per se, although it obviously incorporates quite a big bit of their hardware. Neither does it seem to be an ad for Dubai. In fact, I’m not exactly sure what it is an advert for. It might not even be an advert for anything. I’m almost getting the feeling that they just did it because they could for no actual monetary gain.
And that’s pretty cool.

Yes. More of this sort of thing please.